Future, Present, & Past:

Speculative~~Giving itself latitude and leisure to take any premise or inquiry to its furthest associative conclusion.

Critical~~Ready to apply, to itself and its object, the canons of reason, evidence, style, and ethics, up to their limits.

Traditional~~At home and at large in the ecosystem of practice and memory that radically nourishes the whole person.

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Thursday, August 26, 2010

How does a book?

In response to a thread at An Und Für Sich regarding what books had recently "grabbed" readers, I tried to articulate something about what it means to me to have my attention seized by a book.

One kind of book that seizes me makes me say, “Aha–” (or more rarely, “Thank God!”) “– now I can go on honestly; now I see a way forward.” Needless to say, this need not have much to do with agreeing with an author. It is of course possible for a book to address itself to a dilemma one knew oneself, more or less, to be in: this is a staple, of everything from self-help books to those philosophy texts that preach to their choirs of idealist or eliminativists or marxists or whoever. Such readers want a book that will help them to refute the latest crop of objections from the other side. The best such books formulate their position very convincingly, doing as much justice as possible to their opponents and showing both why alternative views arise and why they can better be dealt with in the terms the book proposes.

But such an exclamation as I mention is only elicited by a stronger sort of work, one which does not start out with a particular opponent in mind, but simply articulates the force of a single insight or group of insights, and shows how this reconfigures the landscape. Badiou's Being and Event proved to be this kind of work for me, notwithstanding the fact that I am not, by a long shot, anything resembling a Badiouan. In fact, it was more an experience of seeing the view I strongly disagree with put forward in a powerful, coherent and robust way, a way that not only let me see (again) why one would see anything in it--i.e., as close to my own stance; but also helped me to see it whole, in a way that let me formulate much more precisely my own stance, the points on which I differ.

Harman's Guerilla Metaphysics was somewhat different; in this case it was a book that formulated a set of problems that was nagging in my mind for many years, mainly about the difficulties of formulating a relational account of reality. While I was not completely persuaded by Harman's answers, I was very impressed with the way he snapped the questions into focus for me, from a vague cloud of concerns that had been sort of buzzing in the background, to a well-defined set of questions--almost, one could say, a research program.

Already in a thinker like Badiou, the concern is existential, not just intellectual. But then, there is a different sort of book, aimed primarily at the soul and not just the mind. Be it ever so tightly reasoned, one discerns in such a text that its argument is intended on a different level (and this often, in fact, leaves it open to a number of obvious objections that still seem somehow to miss the point). Such a work--when it succeeds--shows you to be in a dilemma you did not even suspect. This sort of book makes me say: “Fuck, now I have to either lie and pretend I never read this, or live differently.” Nietzsche, Simone Weil, Martin Buber, Wendell Berry, among others, have all written books that did this to me.

Upon reflection, it occurs to me that they stand in a venerable tradition, going back at least to St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. First he sets up the demands of the Law (wretched man that I am...!) and then opens a crack to an escape route. Convince you that you are facing an unappealing prospect, then offer you the way out.

Such books tend to be tendentious and pointed, full of fight and not long on nuance, and the way to critique this is still to assert that the alternative is a false dichotomy. (It is also a standard way to critique much less fiercely armed books-- just argue that they are responding to a non-issue.) It's easy to shake one's head over Weil or Nietzsche (to say nothing of St Paul) precisely because they frame their concerns in such uncompromising [anti-]moral terms, insisting, at least between the lines, that their purport implicates you.

But when you can see all the ways and reasons for evading the dilemma proffered, and still regard the solution as the way forward-- this is because you are (and know yourself to be, in some sense) persuaded, won, even seduced. You see a new way of being that is more interesting now, and you can choose it freely instead of feeling compelled. Such moments are a kind of conversion or of falling in love.

But-- and the fact that these authors are obviously of more than one mind makes this question all the more pressing-- is there a manner in which one can authentically keep open a "back door" or an escape clause in such conversions--without compromising?

6 comments:

Well, as this is something of an ethical question, I think that any response to it would have to take in our realtionships to others; I cannot think of ethics as something that concerns my heart and mind alone, but must include the way I interact with other living beings. This may sound obvious, but in my twenties I tended to look at morality as very theoretical and really about coming up with sets of rules for situations I had never encountered. If I could look at it only as a question for myself - as I would have done in my twenties, say - I would say that the answer to the question is absolutely not. Once you see the way you must behave, you cannot compromise what you now know to be right. But then there is that pesky reality...As an example from a non-philosopher's life: the more I read books about the situation of the world in terms of economics, environment, war, etc., the more convinced I become that I must live a simpler life. And by simpler I personally mean everything. Less stuff, less to do, less money. Simple. But the outcome of this amongst the majority of my female friends has been interesting. No, they do not see how lovely my life is and decide that they would like to follow in my footsteps. They look at me and think I'm unfashionable. And I am. And for many, many women, being unfashionable looks like pure misery.I would be compromising if I were not to follow through on what I think of as the lure and promise and demand of simplicity. I would also be compromising my personal ethics if I were to damage my relationships with others for anything less than a damn good reason. So the solution is to remain in relationship with all of these women, not preach and lecture them to the point of driving them crazy (which wouldn't do much to advance my point anyway), and attempt to continue in what I feel to be right. But the whole doing the right thing is made a hell of a lot harder by remaining friends with all of these people, because quite frankly, I'd really like a new pair of heels.So I suppose my point is this. My heart says do the right thing or you're doing the wrong thing. Period. But my experience tells me that doing the right thing in all aspects of one's life tends to complicate things. One compartment starts tugging on another, and that always leads to blurred lines.And ugly shoes. *sigh*

Would you say that this drive -- "simplify, simplify!" -- has arisen mainly as fallout from the books you've read? There are those who would say that books are already a good deal too complicated (& certainly too 'fashionable'). And of course, simplicity can be its own fashion.

My wonder about the possibility of "leaving the back door open" has to do with my sense that a book (and of course there can be other experiences that do the same thing) makes available a world, or at least a way of experiencing the world. Compare this to the way you "get" a joke. You are feeling a sort of imperative towards simplification -- but then, there is the allure of the new pair of shoes. I take it that in some sense you feel this allure is at odds with the drive towards "less." I think I see how it would be, though I have never. in. my. life. had to wrestle with this particular dilemma. But imagine the allure of, say, high heels raised to the nth: for instance, a life of seven-digit yearly income, private helicopters, embossed invitations to parties at embassies, Hollywood openings, Wimbledon, or whatever you fill in the glamor-rich-and-powerful blank with. Never even having to think about money. Now, in this borderline-surreal scenario, one could of course be free to just live off the interest and remain otherwise as simple as Thoreau -- indeed, it might be easier -- but imagine, instead, such a life as a legitimate way of being human, not ethically or existentially disengaged, nor yet a royal road to being a philanthropist (or a bodhisattva), but full of pleasures made possible only by the social game we call being rich -- summers in the French countryside, your own personal copy of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience printed by Blake himself; original Rothko or Giotto on your walls, flattering vintage dresses, whatever appeals to you personally. The point of this thought-experiment is not to argue that "the rich are people too," but that it is possible to imagine (I hold) vastly different ways of being in the world which are nonetheless authentic. And this is so even if one is compelled by one's own daimonion to an antithetical mode. Is this just the same as saying "it takes all sorts to make a world"? Or being glad that someone out there feels called to the vocation of being a dentist or a bartender or a dairy farmer so that I can be a teacher or a writer? I think it is more, because (as you note) the question is not just of vocation but of ethics. The question then is can one "get the joke" of, say, being rich, or indeed of being poor; of being a soldier or a pacifist; of being an communist activist or of being an intern for a US Senator.

The question arose in the post about books because, after all, whatever moral imperatives one might feel arising out of one's reading of (say) Dante, are bound to be different and even antithetical from those that come out of reading The Gay Science --as I know all too well -- and yet, each of these can feel equally compelling.

Very interesting post and question. I am sorry to do now something I often hate in other people, namely, referring to further cases (more familiar to oneself). The "seducing" power of a book reminds me of the problem of how to understand the Mīmāṃsā claim that the Veda cannot be understood and at the same time thought to be false, because the two things are contradictory (Śābarabhāṣya ad MS 1.1.2 and 1.1.5). They are contradictory, in my opinion, because the Veda conveys a prescriptive content, and a prescription can either be understood –and in this case one feels enjoined, one has no back door open– or it is not (for instance, because it is not relevant to us). Unlike a descriptive statement, which can be understood even if we do not agree with it, it is possible to imagine that a prescriptive statement is only understood (i.e., it has its meaning reaching us), once we feel enjoined by it. This does not imply that we have to obey it, but surely that we can't avoid feeling compelled to.

Elisa, I am glad whenever the subject matter is expanded. That is metalepsis in action.

There is something quite terrifying to me in the notion that to understand an injunction is to feel enjoined by it (as opposed to intellectually seeing that the author of the injunction intends us to feel enjoined). Your point bears comparison with its mirror-image in the Christian tradition, which strongly contends that one can & must believe in the messianic and Lordly status of Jesus, but also implies (especially in Jesus' own remarks about his parables) that to some this message is actually concealed. (This is putting it too briefly, but see, e.g. Matt. 13:

"The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. ...This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand."

Skholiast, I guess the 'disagreement' lies in our understanding of what "understanding" means. What you describes as the understanding of an injunction, namely the fact that one "intellectually sees that the author of the injunction intends us to feel enjoined" is "understanding" it from a descriptive perspective. In other words, you describe what it does. Mīmāṃsā authors, probably, meant that there is another kind of understanding, which is typical of injunctive statements and which entails the fact that one "understands" them in their injunctive value, that is, as orders, without "translating" them in a description.

Wittgenstein says in the TLP that good or bad willing does not change anything in the world but the world as a whole, i.e. that it alters the world the subject lives in. (The world, he says, "waxes and wanes".) I think there must be some sense in which, say, the case for cosmic optimism or pessimism is as you describe it, only understood if it is believed. And certainly optimism and pessimism both have an injunctive aspect of to them.

When you put the distinction between senses of 'understanding' as you do -- a "descriptive perspective" vs the perspective you attribute to Mīmāṃsā writers, it seems to me that this latter is close to the "participatory" experience, a way of hearing the injunction qua injunction, and thus feeling (inherently, as it were) the effective "thou shalt." As I think over the way this makes me worry and yet find it attractive, I think of two things from the Abrahamic traditions I know better. When Israel receives the Torah, the people reply to Moses, "We will do it and we will hear it," and the sages in the Talmud meditate at length on this apparent inversion of order-- why promise to "do" before one has promised to "hear"?

Second, Kierkegaard in Purity of Heart makes a remark on which I have often meditated: "The Eternal with its “obey at once!” must not become a sudden shock which merely confuses the temporal. It should, on the contrary, be of assistance to the temporal." But of course Kierkegaard says nothing about mitigating the "obey at once!"

About the Blogroll:

MORE THAN A DISCLAIMER

These are all sites that I read; not sites I always read regularly. Need I specify that they're not all sites I agree with? The science sites (including "fringe-" and "pseudo-") I'm not competent to "agree" with (or not); and the religious sites... some might say I'm not competent to agree (or not) with them either. Not that it always stops me.As to the political sites, these are, by intention, from across the political spectrum from quietist to paranoid. Some are included because they articulate positions which, while not mine, I believe can be held by people of good faith. A few others (you may guess which) are included mostly on the "know thy enemy" principle. It is possible--nay, likely--that you will consider many opinions posted thereon (to say nothing of the comments) venial, stupid, rude, dangerous, or occasionally worse. (I do.)

I am, in case it needs mentioning, neither a Freemason nor an anti-Freemason.There are also some literary, music, and food sites, which mostly avoid this pitfall, but caveat lector. This is the internet, after all.

Please see here for other sites not listed below, including several that are frequently updated but which do not have feeds.